KALAMAZOO, MI-- The Airborne Toxic Event is lead by a writer, and named for a section of a classic of post-modern literature.

The Airborne Toxic Event.Autumn DeWilde

So, before we get to the meat of the interview, which sounded like a talk between two English majors, here are the basic details: They are a five-piece band from the Los Angeles area, that's been compared to U2 (the band is fans of the ATE, often playing their 2008 hit "Sometime Around Midnight" before shows), Arcade Fire and The Strokes.

At times they rock out, other times they bring in elements of classical chamber music. Their third album, "Such Hot Blood" (Island, 2013), is mellower, with meditations on romance.

They'll play their first show here at District Square Sept. 17.

ATE vocalist/songwriter Mikel Jollett said it feels like "we've arrived, in a way, to be able to play so many types of cities." He was speaking from South Carolina. "I'm pretty sure I'm in Columbia, SC. But there's a possibility I'm in Charleston."

Touring disorients him. All he knows is that they're on their 904th show of the tour, and, as a vegetarian, he's in a region where people ask him, "The collard greens got some ham in it -- that's okay, right?"

Around 2006, when Jollett was a freelance journalist and fiction writer, he put the band together as an outlet for his songwriting. He named it after an environmental disaster in Don DeLillo's 1985 novel "White Noise."

The book has a number of themes centering on media and a fear of death, connected metaphorically to white noise static on TVs and radios.

"I just didn't think we'd be a very good band," Jollett said. "We started off kinda more like an art project." They'd have TVs on stage tuned to static, and only dressed in black and white. "We wanted to look like static."

They'd also show the audience a live video feed of the audience watching the band. "All very meta. A rock band disguised as an art project disguised as a rock band."

If You Go

He didn't expect a future as a successful group being asked, in airports, who they were, and responding "sheepishly, 'we're called The Airborne Toxic Event.'"

Because of all this, they've been tagged as a "literary band."

"In the great big dusty cannon of rock and roll history... the chapter on you is one sentence. 'They were literary.'"

It's ironic, Jollett said, "because the whole point of 'White Noise' is how in this larger media world everything becomes this simulacrum of a simulacrum of a simulacrum. Things get repeated so many times, these meaningless phrases, even if they don't contain much meaningful information. There's just so much information, you have only so much time to dedicate to one particular idea."

For the average person there's not much need to spend a lot of time mulling on a band name or the ideas behind a band, he said. Therefore, "We are the literary band, I guess."

What's his description of The ATE? "I think we're kind of genre-less. I think we play lots of styles of music.... We're musicians in the purest sense in that we're not stuck to a genre. We just like music. If we liked polka, we'd probably play polka."

In Jollett's lyrics "there's a very strong emphasis on narrative, story and place. A lot of these things are literary references," he said.

"I think a lot about those sorts of things."

A live rock act as a medium provides a much different experience than reading a novel, he understands. So it's The ATE's goal to connect with the audience, he said.

"We not only want to put on a good show... we also want to remove that fourth wall, with the idea that you are part of the show," he said.

It's "important to have an element of the extemporaneous, important to flirt with disaster. As Andy Warhol said, something, as opposed to nothing, has to happen. And that's what makes it rock and roll."

And the idea behind The ATE? "For us the idea is, life is short, and that's awful. Okay, now, so what do you do next? The answer is, enjoy it."